Acceptance, Security, and Significance is the three legged stool that makes up our identity. My weakest “leg” is the one labeled significant.
I look at my little ol’ life and see a stay at home mom who rarely gets regular showers, a crazy homeschooler who receives the stink eye way too often, a wanna be author with dreams of a book in my local bookstore. My kitchen sink is never empty, I raise dust bunnies, my bed gets made fifty percent of the time, and my kitchen island collects life’s clutter. I don’t see significance when I look at my life.
God’s definition of significance transforms my understanding of it. Significance is not about being noticed or an empty kitchen sink. It’s not even a bed made with the blankets hanging evenly along the side (mine are quite crooked, thank-you very much).
It’s not even having thousands of people read these words or buy my “some-day books.”
Significance means becoming smaller so God can become bigger. It’s about less me so more God-honoring fruit grows so other’s can experience the harvest for his purpose. It’s realizing that this life isn’t about positioning myself for my idea of success. But how I position myself to be used for God’s kingdom. In order to do that I must go lower and lower so he increases higher and higher.
I must let go of the unspoken, yet very loud, expectations that pressure me. A clean house? Perfect children? Harmonious marriage? Successful blog? My success or failure in my roles as a wife, mother, housekeeper, teacher, or writer cannot dictate my significance.
That dream? The one that involves words on a page and my name on the spine? My significance doesn’t change whether that dream simply stays this wonderful, glow-y kind of dream. And the even more secret dream—of leading worship for women’s conferences, and leading tender hearts into the most precious presence of God? Guess what? My significance doesn’t change whether I’m leading 8 or 800.
My heart, my life, and my innermost being grows most significant when placed in the tender hands of my most loving God as he shapes and molds for his purpose and position. Even when I’m feeling as though I’m not seen, and as long as I stay a living, willing sacrifice, I know without a shadow of doubt that God looks at me and sees me as significant.
But it’s one thing to know this on a surface level, it’s a completely different to accept this on a heart level where it gets lived out on a daily, moment by moment level.
But these verses in Ephesians and Philippians show us how to live out our acceptance, security, and significance.
“In whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.” Ephesians 3:12 ESV
“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13 ESV
I cannot convince myself of my acceptance, security or significance because I cannot positive self-talk to myself enough to break through the lies my heart believes. I’ve tried. And the failure feeds the lies.
It’s only when I take my weakness to God that I find the strength I need to embrace the Truth of what he says about me:
Beloved.
Chosen.
Accepted.
Purposed.
Significant.
Special.
Priceless.
Receiving our identity in Christ happens the moment we receive Christ as our Savior. But living out our identity with him takes steps of faith and trust that he will rewrite our negative thought patterns into thoughts based on his truth.
It’s this process that makes our lives beautiful and colorful and oh so worth the wrestling. There’s nothing more beautiful than a woman, who has never felt loved or chosen, then when her eyes light with the Holy Fire of God’s truth as it sinks into her heart and rewrites what her past has taught and told her who she is. As the profound truth penetrates her heart, the strongholds fall and God rushes in and beauty is wrought from the rubble.
It’s like the butterfly’s metamorphosis. Beauty unfurls and beauty is you as you embrace the struggle of owning your significance in Christ. Let go of self-sabotage and trust the truth God declares over you.
I’m a pretty boring fruit person—I like the basics, at least that’s what I buy on a regular basis. Ido like mango, but my grocery doesn’t stock the kind I like. I like kiwi fruit, but sometimes I forget to eat it. Have you ever felt a mushy kiwi? It’s kinda creepy.
If you looked in my fridge right now, you’d find one grapefruit and five apples. The apples aren’t crispy, which is to bad. I like them to crunch and squirt apple juice all over my chin, and they must have the perfect blend of tart and sweet. So maybe I’m not really a boring fruit person, but a picky fruit person. Some people would think so, but I just say I know what I like.
I’m glad God isn’t a picky fruit person. I don’t think he’d throw me away if I weren’t crispy like I do with my non-crispy apples. In my house, apples are not guaranteed security. In God’s house, I’m accepted, secure and significant.
I’m studying the verses surrounding my identity in Christ, and I’m finding out who God says I am. He says I’m chosen and not just once or twice, but over and over again. He says I’m secure in him and in today’s world, I need that security. You, too?
But significance? That’s a tough one because pride twists it into something ugly and sinful, rather than something beautiful and holy. Our hearts, my heart, yearns for significance, and I’ve looked for it in people, in approval, in my strength, in my independence, in my roles, in how well I do this marriage thing, and how well I mother my kids. The problem with that?
The pressure to perform squeezes me dry and I fail repeatedly. I’m hurt when I’m overlooked and not recognized, but then I feel guilty when I read Bible verses about humility and meekness. So I squelch this desire for significance, but it grows and comes out in ugly, arrogant ways.
There is the self-seeking, arrogant, all-about-me side to significance, which reveals a gaping hole in my heart that cannot be satisfied with anything but God.
My identity—my approval, my security, and my significance— is found in him. He placed this desire for significance in my heart so that I would gain a greater understanding of who I am in God. And God says I am significant.
I am significant. You are significant. Did you know that you and I are God’s workmanship? We are created for purposes prepared in advance for us to fulfill because we are significant players in God’s plan for mankind.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10
I’m not created for myself. I am his. He longs for me to walk in his ways, not mine. I’ve messed things up enough to know that my plans aren’t that great so I’m totally okay with his plans for my life. I’ve found that when I walk in his ways, my desire for “self-seeking significance” is traded for the real truth.
The real truth is that I’m significant because Jesus chooses me. Imagine! God chooses me. He chooses you. God chooses the educated and the uneducated. He chooses the wealthy and the poor. He chooses us because he made us, and he is waiting for us to respond to him. When I stop striving for self-defined significance, and I rest in the significance of Jesus’s choice, I am given two choices.
I can either receive it or reject it. I’ve done both. When I’m stuck in a place of perfection and insecurity, I reject his choosing me. I receive His truth when I give up perfection, insecurity, and disbelief. The belief that I have purpose in God’s plan and that I’m chosen by Jesus to bear fruit is intertwined and cannot be separated.
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” John 15:16
“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5
Fruit bearing is impossible without abiding in Christ. We are either branches disconnected from the vine with fruit that rots from the inside out or we think we are the vine itself and the fruit we produce will look like fruit, but it’s a mirage.
Our significance comes when we receive God choosing us and planning for us to fulfill the works he has prepared for us. We don’t bring our resume. We don’t bring our list of accomplishments as a prerequisite for significance. We come with humble, wide hearts, and he receives us.
I don’t know about you, but I want to be good fruit. I don’t want someone to take fruit from my branch and be disappointed by the quality. I accomplish good fruit bearing when I live my life wholly committed to His absolute, unswerving truth. This is my significance and it is yours. Will you receive it?
Every year, I avoided a certain appointment. I wanted to know about it, but I didn’t want to be there for it. I panicked and my heart did funny things.
My heart raced and I couldn’t sleep for weeks leading up to the appointment. It consumed my waking thoughts and disturbed my sleep. I couldn’t seem to accomplish anything except worry.
Psalm 112:7 snapped me out of my funk: “He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord.” I feared bad news. My heart wanted to be steadfast and it wanted to trust, but it struggled.
I’ve been exploring the concept of security in Christ and Psalm 112:7 could fit in with the next three verses used to assure us of security in an insecure world.
“Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his sear of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” 1 Corinthians 1:21-22 NIV
“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 NIV
“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.” Philippians 3:20-21 NIV
Psalm 112:7, along with these three verses, may have penetrated the hard shell of fear around my heart, but I still struggled with the cycle of worry and lack of sleep.
I laid wide awake, listening to the creaky bones of an old farmhouse. The furnace cycled on and then off trying heat the drafty rooms. The water softener’s recycle echoed through the register vents. I listened to the coyote’s song and watched the red numbers on the digital clock creep their way to morning night after night.
I treated this event with the same intensity as Chicken Little in the children’s story who decided the sky must be falling when a single acorn hit him on the head. I laughed at the foolishness of Chicken Little, but when I became Chicken Little, I didn’t laugh. This appointment was an acorn, not the sky, but I treated it as though the sky was falling. It was completely and utterly ridiculous and I knew it.
I knew my angst over this situation and I knew the word of God, but the battle within my heart raged and rarely did the word of God win. I said I trusted God, but my actions and my words did not jive.
I felt the truth God’s word strike me in such a way that my ‘sky is falling’ perspective fell from the sky and lay shattered at my feet.
My security is not found in the outcome of appointments, good health, or financial freedom. It’s found in my one true King. Your security is found there as well. He is trustworthy. He is secure.
When he is our rock, we can trust that he is working things out. He views a much larger picture, and we don’t need to see the entire picture in order to trust him. He is our security.
My circumstances do not establish me. God establishes me. He takes this wretched fear-filled heart and fills me with anointing. He anoints you as well. He calls you beloved and he lays before you the task to trust him. We need his anointing to do this well. It’s impossible to trust well without his love coursing over and through us. If I don’t have his anointing, then my fear, anxiety and worry overtakes the goodness he longs to do in me and through me.
Our failures do not adversely affect our security because I know that God will complete the good work he began. He is the one who saves. He is the one who sets our feet on the solid rock. He is the one who rescues, redeems and gives a purpose for this life. And if he is the one who does the beginning, then he will do the middle, and he will do the completing.
We need only to submit, surrender, and obey. He is our everything. He is love. He is the beginning, the middle, and the end. This gives us the security we need to face those hard days when we are not trusting him well. It’s the security we need when we’re overtaken by angst on the parts of our story yet to be.
The sky is not falling. I can never recover those sleepless nights because the worry didn’t change the outcome. The fear of what might be was greater than reality, but I couldn’t see it at the time. Irrational fear overtook me in the face of our annual tax appointment. Yes, my friends, it was a measly tax appointment that was the acorn in my Chicken Little Story.
In my mind, this acorn held my hopes for security, but that’s not an acorn’s job. An acorn’s job is to grow a tree and God used this ‘acorn’ to grow faith in my heart as I transferred my security from a circumstance to him.
What is the acorn that has fallen that makes you cry out, ‘The sky is falling!’ Will you let God show you where your security lies and how he can turn your acorn into faith that your security is in him?
